Searching for Patties in England

There is no record of the parents of our great-great-grandfather, John Pattie Sr, or of how he happened to be living as a wheelwright in Fredercksbug, Virginia, in 1770.  One thing seems obvious: The family did not originate in America like the Sioux and Apaches.

My brother Don came home from a business trip to England and told me he found several Patties listed in the London telephone book.  Then, in the summer of 1991, my husband, John Durkalski, and I exchanged our home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for a house in Ipswich, near the North Sea Coast in Suffolk County, England. 

Standing by a little table in a corner of the dining room of our Ipswich house, I looked in the thin, little Ipswich telephone book (Ipswich is a small city) and dialed what I thought was someone listed as Pattie. The voice that answered had the reedy voice of a frail old man.  He told me politely that I was mistaken; his name was not “Pattie” but “Pattle”.  In the small print of the little telephone book I had misread the “l” for an “i”. 

One of the delights of living in England that summer was making friends and having neighbors. One evening John and I went next door to visit the Blands.  I can’t remember their first names – this was 1991, and in 2015 I remember other things vividly.  Mr. Bland was a retired sea captain.  He said, “Even in storms and cloudy weather I could cross the Atlantic and land within 30 miles of New York.”.  

John and I sat on the couch in their living room, while Captain Bland went upstairs and came down carrying a box the size of a twelve-inch cube made of polished wood with brass fittings, as handsome as any jewelry box.  Opening the shiny brass clasp, he lifted out of the velvet liner a brass instrument.  He explained, “This is my sextant."

I was reminded that in his years of navigating the seas, Captain Bland used the same instruments that Columbus used on his voyages of discovery.  By the time Captain Bland retired, satellites were guiding ships, like the autopilot flies airplanes and the GPS directs our cars on freeways. 

Before saying “Good Night” to with the Blands, I mentioned my disappointment at finding Pattle instead of Pattie in the Ipswich telephone directory.  Mrs. Bland immediately said, “Pattie is a North Country Name.”   She and Capt. Bland were originally from Northumbria, a county in the north of England, bordering on Scotland.  They had moved south to Ipswich for his job. 

The next day she brought over her telephone book from Northumbria, even smaller and thinner than the Ipswich directory.  Sure enough it listed six or eight Patties.  I copied down the names and telephone numbers.  I regret that John and I became so involved in enjoying sightseeing in the Great Houses and fine Fourteenth Century churches in charming Suffolk villages that I never called any of them.  Somehow I also lost my list of Patties in Northumbria..

I had learned some things.  Forget about possible origins in France or Italy.  For many centuries the Patties have been English.  The ancestors of John Pattie Sr. of Virginia probably came from Northumbria.